this corner of the state. Some of the more dedicated laity maintained Prayer Book worship in their homes until after the first convention of 1789, but they kept no records, elected no vestries, and built no houses for worship. From then until the 1820s, the leadership of the scattered congregations established was mainly in the hands of the few early ministers who sought ordination as Episcopalians and rode wide itinerant circuits The first known Episcopal services led by ordained clergy were conducted by Francis Reno. In 1794 he officiated alternately at Pittsburgh and Chartiers. Other clergy resident in this western third of what was then Diocese of Pennsylvania included Robert Ayres, a Methodist ordained in 1789, residing at Brownsville, Fayette County; and Joseph Doddridge, a Methodist ordained in 1792, residing in Independence, Washington County. John Taylor, raised in Ireland and originally a Presbyterian, was ordained to the Episcopal ministry in 1794. He moved to Washington County in 1797 to teach school, and was soon invited to lead a small congregation in Pittsburgh. During the late eighteenth century, Doddridge was especially active, but unsuccessful, in advocating for a diocese comprising western Pennsylvania, western Virginia, and Ohio in the frontier Upper Ohio Valley. In 1865, the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania was divided, and the western part became known as the Diocese of Pittsburgh. John Barrett Kerfoot was the first bishop of the diocese, which then included 24 counties and 28 parishes. In 1910 approval was granted for the division of the Diocese of Pittsburgh into two dioceses, and the northern part became the Diocese of Erie (now the Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania). The Diocese of Pittsburgh took its current shape, covering the eleven counties of southwestern Pennsylvania. History The Diocese grew under the successive leadership of Bishops John Barrett Kerfoot, Cortland Whitehead, Alexander Mann, Austin Pardue, and Robert Appleyard and developed several notable institutions: St. Margaret's Hospital, the Church Home (later Canterbury Place), St. Barnabas Community, and Sheldon Calvary Camp. The diocese was known for its work among miners and steelworkers, and as the steel industry began its collapse in Pittsburgh offered a variety of programs supporting workers. However, evangelicals targeted the diocese as the location for a new seminary, Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, and spent much of the 1970s pushing the diocese towards the theological position favored by that group. By the 1990s they had changed the theological mix of